What is wierd is that the media hyped up swine flu for awhile there. Now you really don't hear anything about it.

Sanofi is recalling their pediatric H1N1 vaccine because it's not potent enough? What the F is wrong with them? From what I know, vaccines are supposed to contain the dead virus and our poor body is supposed to become immune to it, so how do you make it more potent? So what went wrong? Not enough testing, not enough people falling for it, not enough profit?

Question for the people who works or have any contact with the pharma giants.

How do I get my hands on all the vaccines in the US, so I can send them to the group of people doing my research?

Its a specific group of vaccines that is being recalled, yet the details are light from the story, and I don't see anything on the FDA or Sanofi website giving more info.

However, a recall does not mean the product is bad. I know there have been problem getting a strong immune response in young kids, so they did up the dosage to two rounds for kids. Could be that this lot is responding poorly, or some outside chance of a misformulation. I can guarantee you the phones are very busy right now over at Sanofi and the FDA right now. We'll find out soon enough.

Vaccines are controlled substances. They are not something anyone can just get their hands on.

To some of the larger points:

Thimerisol has been removed from a large number of vaccines. There are a number of H1N1 vaccines w/o Thimerisol and can be requested.

However, a signifigant heath risk of Thimerisol has not been demonstrated. I know its a controversal subject with lots of strong opinions, and I know Luc's personal interest, so I don't mean to be offensive.

However, I think its very fair to say that if the danger's of H1N1 have been over hyped, so too have been the dangers of Thimerisol. (from New England Journal of Med.) The data just isn't there establishing a link. Is mercury good for you? Of course not. But, you have to look at the total spectrum of risk. Mercury is in the water, esp near coal-burning areas, as well as in many commonly eaten species of fish. Tuna, swordfish, red snapper, etc. This is a form of mercury that is less well excreted than the form in the vaccines.

So what you have to determine, how does the once a year injection of the Thimerisol (if any) compare to all the chronic mercury exposure you receive over the year from your diet and environment? Each person has to make up his own mind on the levels of risk.

It is absolutely true tho that the dangers of flu are very real. 36000 (est) people die of flu ea year in the US. Hundreds of those are children.
I can tell you as a parent of two small kids (1 & 3yo) in daycare, I far more worry about them catching something there than the thimerisol exposure they will recieve from the vaccines. They always have some bug or another, and a flu outbreak is very possible, esp if many parents don't get their kids vaccinated. Again, ea person has to make this calculus.

Lastly, skepticism is healthy, but I think its fair to apply it in both directions. It makes me very skepitcal to see websites that extol the dangers of mercury meanwhile selling expensive potions and poultices for "mercury detox." Products with dubious medical claims, none of which is evaluated by FDA or clinical trials, and has no manufacturing regulations? No thank you, I'll rather trust the professionals backed up with real studies and data. There are people that have died taking stuff like that.

None of the claims on that site even make much sense to me. They are long on references, but all their claims boil down to "hey, doesn't this (vague and nebulous) condition seem oddly similar to this condition for mercury poisoning?" Shyness and fatigue? As if no one else has that.

I don't understand the widespread cynicism and distrust of science these days. Then again, if less than 40% of the country believes in evolution (which, as a degreed biologist and professional scientist, is like asking whether you believe in gravity or not,) ....IDK.



So why would gov'ts be pushing the vaccines? Beyond general public health concerns, hospitalizing hundreds of thousands of people every year for flu complications, which many could have been avoided had they been vaccinated, is extremely expensive. Esp if the gov't is on the hook for the medical bills thru state-run programs. $50 for a flu shot vs $50,000 for a hospital stay is a no brainer. Simply pissing tax $ away. Ins companies will be doing the same too.

How can they make it more potent? Will they be adding more dead viruses in the vaccine?

I have no idea what is going w/ that. It was supposed to be a slow growing virus, maybe there were problems w/ that. Perhaps its just showing low immune response to the virus (as was seen earlier, and kids got upped to 2 rounds) and may require some reformulation of the injectible (say for a higher titer count.)

They are saying tho that kids who recieved that vaccine won't need additional shots, nor was it done for safety reasons. Important point.

There is continous monitoring and testing that is going on w/ the vaccine, so they probably saw something that wasn't going as well as hoped. So far it was only Sanofi, and not any of the other 3 manu's. We shall see.

Ok, I'll be watching. I'm also hoping I can get most of the vaccines to do some independent research to find out what's actually in them. I really don't understand why our kids here in the US needs all of these vaccines and the numbers shows a lot of side effects from the time they all came into play. My uncles and a few other people can't answer none of the questions as well, but they know some of the things that can cause side effects.

Hi lutac, I had the Swine flu (or so the doctors said that's what I had) almost two months ago and I don't remember ever being that sick before. My fever shot up to almost 105F I felt like I had been beat all over with a baseball bat. Spent four days in the hospital wondering if this was it for my old a$$:angel: It took another three weeks before I began too feel normal again. Well as normal as it gets for me. Oh BTW I'm 55+:gasp: I should add I live in the middle TN area.
georgec

The only time I remember getting the Flu was when I took a vaccine to get into school here in the US. The reaction I had to the vaccine was almost immediate. You're still young George and I'll bet it was just the Flu.

So basically they're saying the vaccines lost its strength from sitting on the shelf. That shows me that a lot of people are not falling for this trap. Now the other concern comes up, what will they do to make the vaccines last longer on the shelf?

Thanks lutac, I don't feel old, I think this hobby helps keep me young at heart. I also think you are correct that this H1N1 is just allot of media driven hype that allows the drug companies to acquire huge government contracts and dump their worthless meds on the unsuspecting public.
Just my .02 worth, georgec

I had swine, for about a week and let me tell you it sucked. I had a 103' temp, really sore throat and had massive body aches & was tired all the time. Never threw up though.... Still debating on if I should get the vaccine or not.

When I had the flu after taking a vaccine to get into school, I had the high fever, body aches and was tired all the time as well. That was in the early 90's and it wasn't the so called swine flu. If a doctor says I have the swine flu, I would question him on the spot and show me proof. Show me a normal flu virus and the one I have. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't know what to do. So my question is, are this doctors confusing swine flu with the flu? This whole thing happened so fast and the public was even stupid enough to stop eating pigs thinking they would get it. What I noticed is how many got scared while looking at the media, but failed to look around and when that 1 out of 6 news came out, I told everyone it was complete BS. Funny thing is a lot of people lined up to be test objects for this vaccine(s).

So I talked to my wife about this and read up a little as more info came out. She works in regulatory, and has a wide exposure and good background on these. I work for a med device company. I know some things tangentially, but its not my specialty.
The short answer to your ? is basically yes. Some components of vaccines have low stability, so they do break down over time. Each lot of vaccines are continously monitored after release for stability, and will be recalled if anything falls below spec. In that particular case it was an antigen (a protein)that initiated the recall.
She guessed that that lot probably had a component that was not far above spec when it was released, therefore its overall shelf-life was shorter than avg.
This is why there were no safety issues for no one had to retake the vaccine.

If you already got the virus, you are now vaccinated against the same viral strain (ie you've already been exposed to the virus and are now immune.) You would not be vaccinated to the seasonal flu however.


The swine flu virus is a novel variant of a typical Influenza type A virus. If needed, there are many ways to test for the virus. There are rapid diagnosis kits that can be done in the office and provide results in less than 10min.
Further testing may be needed to differentiate form one strain to the next (perhaps even swine flu from other Type A flu viruses.)
My company makes viral test kits, where the actual DNA of the virus is screened and identified with high specificity. IDK if we have a H1N1 kit tho. You would need a test like this, or another more sophisticated test to have greater certainty. This can get expensive, and results are not necc available quickly.

Any test kits will cost a good deal of $. Most docs are going to go off clinical experience to diagnose. They will see hundreds of patients every flu season, so get pretty used to the symptoms and don't need to waste the money to test.


Otherwise I got both vaccines this year. I didn't last year and got the flu. Wasted 5 vacation days laying in bed with fever and horrible muscle pains, and ended up getting sinusitis and a respitory infection I had to get an inhaler for, as my chest was tight and I was wheezing and out of breath.
F that. Made sure to get vaccines this year. Had a bit of a cold for a day after I got the seasonal flu vac, and my shoulder was sore. The H1N1 vaccine didn't do anything other than a buzzy head for a night.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/17429499

I guess France and some other European countries fell for the scam as he said around 30-32 seconds of the video.

All we have to do now is wait and see what new virus will be made next. Probably new mutated H1N1, H5N1, N5N1 or what ever code they put on them.

Bringing this back to the top. Like I said before, watch the profits for the Pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes it sucks being correct. GlaxoSmithKline for example had sales of just 720 million pounds for the Relenza drug and what's funny is that last year it was only 57 million pounds. The Q4 sales alone for that drug was over 250 million pounds compared to just 13 million pounds for last year. Their Q4 profit was up over 60%. In all total vaccine sale was up 30%. I hope they release the H1N1 numbers.

Good times people, let wait what the next virus outbreak will have in store for us.